


our time is running out (baby your time is up)

by rowenabane



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Death, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Thriller, Time Loop, Time Travel, kunil nation im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2020-09-25 10:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20375317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowenabane/pseuds/rowenabane
Summary: Kun rewinds, but there is never enough time.





	our time is running out (baby your time is up)

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys I hope you all enjoy this! Thanks so much to the prompter and kuniversism mod for this wonderful opportunity to write soul-crushing kunil ♡

Time shatters.

At least, that's what it seems like — the world becomes a flurry of noise and sound and for a second Kun thinks it’s his fault, thinks that he has broken time in some way he cannot explain. He sees the car, sees the wheels, sees metal hit a body.

Rewind. Press rewind.

…

Here is a thing you should know. 

Kun sees the car but doesn’t at the same time. He sees it, sees its path, but for some reason the pieces do not match up correctly and do not fit like they should. The entire street is like an elaborate optical illusion, all layers and overlapping pieces. The road doesn’t look straight, Kun doesn’t _ see _.

Time slows and shatters. Rewind. Press rewind.

…

“Oh, excuse me,” the man says, brushing past Kun. Kun mumbles an excuse me back, not even glancing up from his phone. The man opens the coffee shop door and walks out into the street.

Here is a question: if you could prevent a tragedy, would you?

Kun looks out the window of the coffee shop and sees but doesn’t see the man walk out into the street, just like he sees but doesn’t see the car barreling towards him. In that moment he does not just see — he _recognizes. _

Mouth open, eyes wide. Kun can see the expression on the man’s face change by fractions, almost expressing a whole emotion. Kun pushes the coffee shop doors open, running, but he is too late.

The screech of metal. A scream. Press rewind.

…

Kun runs out the door again, but this time he runs all across the street and pushes the man roughly onto the sidewalk. This time, the car hits him with all the force it had reserved for the person standing there before. Kun feels each of his ribs crack with the impact, can almost count the shards of glass that fly out at him. Metal on bone and bone on pavement and in the last fleeting seconds before the light goes out in his head, he presses rewind.

…

Kun stands on the sidewalk, gasping. The memory, which is less a memory and more an afterimage, impresses itself on him. For a second Kun feels his ribs cracking, feels blood slick on his hands, but then the image is gone.

He watches the man across the street get hit by the car, watches the crowd on the sidewalk shift and ebb like a wave. It's true what they say about car crashes—everything seems to happen in slow motion.

But time does not slow. A second passes, and Kun presses his hands together. Press rewind.

…

This is what a memory looks like:

“Hey,” Kun says. “I’m Kun, and I’m in your biology class. Have we met?"

The man smiles and shakes his head. Kun does not realize it then, but he will soon know that face just as well as he knows his own. “No,” he says, and his voice is like honey. “I don’t think we have.”

…

Kun runs out into the street and then hesitates. He counts seconds like they are prayers, recites time like it is bible verses, like it is lyrics of a song. There is the crunch of metal. A resounding scream. The ebbing and flowing crowd.

Rewind. Rewind, rewind, rewind.

…

“My name is Taeil,” the man says, he reaches out to shake Kun’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

They smile at each other, and neither of them realizes that this is where their stories converge.

…

Kun rewinds, and then he recognizes.

The man stands in the street like a deer in the headlights, like a child that cannot comprehend what it sees. He stands like a fool and Kun wants to scream at him, wants to move more than a second in time so that he can save him. 

A name that is just as familiar to him as his own rushes through his lips, and he does not realize he is screaming it until he falls to his knees.

Rewind.

…

“Do you trust me?” Taeil asks. They are standing on the roof of the chemistry building, the night wind whipping around them as if it wants to either push them closer or rip them apart. Taeil’s eyes are soft and dark and_ feeling, _filled with an emotion that Kun is too afraid to name.

“I do,” he says softly. They have known each other for several months now, working in circles around each other. They are both juniors at the university, Kun studying to become a microbiologist and Taeil a neuroscientist. They are tied together with that thin string of longing to become better. They are tied together with only the barest of similarities, the lightest cobwebbing that links them.

“Would you still trust me if I kissed you?” Taeil asks, stepping forward. The wind rushes at their backs but not between them, as if it realizes that space is sacred. 

“I would,” Kun says, and he means it.

Taeil leans forward, and the kiss is so light and lovely that Kun rewinds just to experience it again.

…

Kun racks his mind for a solution, but none comes to him. He runs across the street and pushes Taeil (because of course, it's Taeil, it's always been Taeil) but before he can move out of the way the car slams into his side. The pain is blindingly immediate and Kun feels the air leave his lungs, feels the crush of muscle, the rush of blood that isn't where it’s supposed to be. 

Taeil looks at him, eyes wide and mouth gaping.

Kun rewinds.

…

Kun has two options: 

He can walk away. He can walk away, and not look back when he hears the crash happen. He can pretend he has seen nothing at all. He can go home and finish the paperwork he has stacked on his couch. He can watch the new episode of that TV show he’s always wanted to catch up on. He can do that. It is a perfectly viable option, one that he tries to consider.

The other option is this: Kun saves Taeil and he dies. That’s it. The ending is black and white and inevitable. Taeil lives, he dies. Maybe he’ll be able to spend a couple of days at the hospital gasping air into tubes, maybe the doctors will be halfway successful in mending all the tears in his body that aren't supposed to be there, but Kun knows how this ends.

He has a second to decide, but it is the same second, over and over and over again.

Kun is logical. He sees the car hit Taeil, and he rewinds.

…

“The simplest answer to every problem is the one you think of first,” Taeil says, shoving popcorn into his mouth.

“That’s not always true,” Kun says. “Remember that time you tried to convince me that the best way to keep from getting rain on you is to never go outside?”

“That is the simplest answer,” Taeil says smugly. “It just wasn’t the one you needed.”

“That’s true…all I’ve ever needed is you,” Kun says sweetly. Taeil throws a piece of popcorn at him, the movie they picked playing quietly in the background. He’s laughing.

Kun lives in this moment, and he does not rewind.

…

Kun grabs Taeil’s hand and pulls him out of the street but it's not far enough. The impact catches both of them and they spin onto the pavement, glass crashing and metal screeching and Kun dimly hears the crowd on the sidewalks gasp.

He’s gripping Taeil with bloody hands, every part of his body searing with pain he cannot ignore. Breathing is just a prolonged rattle of his chest. Life is just seconds that tick away too fast.

Taeil looks at him with dimming eyes, Kun’s name on his bloody lips. Kun tries to push himself upright and cries out, the world spinning away from him. Time is a void that he spirals into, far, far away.

Rewind. Rewind rewind rewind rewind —

…

“Can you believe we’re graduating?” Kun says. “Time seems to pass so quickly.”

“It does,” Taeil says, kissing his cheek. "That’s why you have to savor it.”

Kun rewinds this moment, and even after that, he replays it in his head many, many times.

…

Kun watches Taeil get hit for what seems like the hundredth time. He watches with a kind of gaping numbness. Exhaustion is creeping into his bones and time seems to bleed together like words on wet paper. He feels imprints, feels impact, feels _ loss _, but he cannot differentiate the present from the future he has denied.

The crunch of metal. A resounding scream. The crowd ebbs and flows.

With tears running down his cheeks, Kun rewinds.

…

“I love you,” Taeil says. It is not the first time he has said this to Kun. He has whispered it, he has shouted it, he has murmured it into Kun’s skin on long, dark nights.

But this feels different. Taeil’s eyes are sad.

“I love you more,” Kun says, pulling Taeil into his arms and placing a kiss on his forehead. Taeil sighs.

It is not the first time he has said this, but it feels like the last.

…

A second can become an eternity if one is not careful. If you live in a moment too long it can end you, can drive everything else from your mind like a tide. Kun knows this.

But still, he cannot, _ will not _ let Taeil go.

The seconds fracture like the springs of a broken watch. In some of them, he tries and fails to push Taeil out of the way. In some of them, he does nothing, just watching with tears as the world becomes crunching metal and terrible screams. In some he does things that are of no help at all — he runs at the car instead of Taeil, he shouts to warn him. Nothing works. Every second ends in either him watching Taeil’s body go limp on the pavement or him feeling his own body relinquish the life that it holds. He cannot win. In this second he cannot win.

Rewind. Rewind until things are set right.

Rewind. Rewind. Rewind.

…

Taeil is sitting at the table in their tiny shared apartment folding pieces of paper into tiny squares. Kun watches him work the edge of a magazine over and over until he can tear it away at the crease. The paper rips and the noise is far too loud.

“What’s wrong?” Kun asks, sitting across from him. Taeil doesn’t look at him and instead crumples the paper in his hand.

“I don’t… I don’t think this is going to work.”

“What?” 

Kun’s world spins and he almost rewinds just to make sure he has heard him correctly. But he knows — deep down he knows.

“How could you say that?” Kun says quietly. “After all this time?”

“I was offered a job at that lab I was talking about the other day,” Taeil says. “I’ll be moving out soon. I’m going to stay with a friend of mine until I can get my own apartment.”

“Taeil,” Kun says, “if this is about distance I’m sure we can work it out —”

“It’s not about distance.” Taeil looks him in the eye. “I’m just...tired.”

“Taeil, I —”

“Do you trust me?” Taeil interrupts.

Kun wishes he could rewind this moment and say something better. He wishes he could rewind this moment and erase it. But he doesn’t. He’s not thinking straight, he _can't _think straight, not when Taeil is looking at him like he is a stranger. Like he does not love him.

“I have always trusted you,” Kun whispers. “I always will.”

“Then trust me that this is for the best,” Taeil replies. He stands and walks to the door. “Goodbye, Kun.”

Kun does not rewind. He simply puts his head in his hands and cries.

…

Two years is a long time. In two years one can forget a face, forget a voice, even one they have known as well as their own. This is why Kun did not recognize Taeil before, why he had been so indifferent. He had almost forgotten.

The world is like a soda can crushing in on him. Every time he rewinds it takes a moment for him to realign himself with the proper moment. His head feels like it is splitting apart.

Kun steps forward and he only needs a second to fix this but it is not this second. He can do nothing in this second but make a choice that will leave one of them dead.

He only needs a second, a certain moment but it is not this one, has never been this one. But he is trapped in this second, unable to make the right choice.

He runs forward, pushing Taeil. The car hits him. 

Rewind.

…

Kun has never used his power like this.

He has reserved it for fixing broken dishes and spilled drinks, making clever comebacks to jokes, avoiding running into people in the street. Little mishaps happen and Kun rewinds a second to fix them. It is just little things, harmless things.

Kun takes a ragged breath as he comes out of the rewind. His hands are shaking and his nerves burn and tingle. For a second he is painfully aware of the blood rushing through every vein in his body. For a second he is nothing _but _his body.

By the time he snaps out of his haze, he hears the screech of metal and a resounding scream. His nerves feel like frayed thread, like the torn edge of a piece of paper.

Kun stumbles forward, shaking, and rewinds.

…

“Why are you calling so late?” Taeil asks, voice tired. Kun swallows. 

“I just wanted to ask how you're doing,” Kun says. Then, quieter, “I miss you.”

Taeil is silent for a long, torturous moment. Kun closes his eyes.

“Go to sleep,” Taeil says quietly. “It’s late.”

He hangs up, and Kun is left alone in the dark. He rewinds the moment, just so he can hear Taeil’s voice one more time.

…

They never said goodbye like they should have. Kun realizes this.

He also realizes that in this moment he can't say goodbye, can't move on like he should. Bad things happen in this world, he knows. But still he cannot let Taeil go.

Kun rewinds, and it takes an almost physical effort to do so. He feels time boil around him, thick and heavy like melted glass, and when he finally finds himself in the second before he almost doesn’t recognize it. He’s standing on the sidewalk. His tongue is burning. Taeil is going to die.

Then it hits him. He doesn't know what exactly he can do with his power, doesn't know his limits. There is a moment in the past that, if Kun could return to it, he could save Taeil.

But oh, Kun cannot travel more than a second back. He is afraid of doing anything else, remembers when he was 10 and learning his power for the first time and tried to go back in time a second extra. He had suffered a terrible migraine for the rest of the week, ending up in the hospital. He cannot imagine what would happen if he tried to rewind more.

But he can try. He can always try. 

Taeil gets hit with the car and Kun rewinds for one second more, just so he can think.

…

Quiet. Kun comes out of the rewind and for a second the world is too quiet. He can’t hear properly, his knees shake, but then sound comes back into existence.

Kun watches the street and his voice is tangled in his throat.

“Taeil,” he whispers, the words heavy in his mouth. They taste like rubbing alcohol and medicine, like too-sweet candy, like salt and salt and salt.

Kun knows how his power works, knows that he cannot rewind more than a second, cannot rewind over and over again.

But he can try. He can try.

_ “The simplest answer to every problem is the one you think of first,” Taeil says. _

He pushes Taeil away from the car and then he rewinds. He rewinds. He rewinds.

…

Kun will never be able to explain what time shattering feels like. It would be easy to say it feels like being in a glass vase as it is smashed against the floor, but that is not the best way to describe it. It feels like pressure on the outside and weightlessness on the inside, it feels like being squeezed by a gigantic hand.

Kun stumbles from one second to the next and he can taste burning in his mouth, can see moments fractured and stretched into unrecognizable caricatures of themselves. He stumbles into a moment and then _forces _himself to rewind again, pushing through the barrier that separates the seconds. It feels like punching a brick wall with his bare fists, like trying to tear through cellophane. Kun is gasping for air as he passes through, his vision darkening.

Rewind. Rewind. Rewind.

Kun is losing his grip on the moments and time is crashing around him like stars. He sees shapes in the moments between time, in the dark void that holds the present and the future together. Kun’s face is wet and his tears taste like salt, salt, salt.

Past, present, and future — they are all the same. Kun stumbles on, through the pain in his head and the twisting in his stomach. He can see himself trapped in other moments and even though it feels like an eternity it is only a handful of seconds, of mere pebbles of time. Eternity warps around him: sometimes it is as sharp and flat as a plane of glass, and sometimes it is like flour falling through a sieve. It has no shape, no form, no reason. Time is a concept, not a constant.

Kun goes back a whole minute — sixty seconds. Sixty rewinds. Sixty moments he steps into and then steps out of. The world turns beneath his feet and Kun has never felt so _sick _in his life. He feels unwhole. Unreal.

Kun rewinds one last time and he is inside the coffee shop, standing near the door. Every color is inverted but Kun sees, oh, how he sees.

A man brushes past him and Kun reaches out, grabbing his arm. Colors fade into normalcy. He is shaking.

“Taeil,” he says, voice raspy. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Taeil looks at him with surprise and then kindness, as if he is greeting an old friend. Kun shivers when Taeil smiles at him, remembers that mouth painted in blood and death. Remembers those eyes lifeless, remembers them torn.

“Kun!” Taeil grabs his hand. “It’s been, what, two years? It’s so good to see you!”

Kun nods but the world seems to fade into white and then back into color. He stumbles and Taeil catches him, arms around his waist. He hears the screech of metal and his head swivels to look out the window. A car has just hit a fire hydrant. Kun is shivering.

Taeil looks at the car and frowns as if he is contemplating something, as if trying to retrieve a memory that is not there. He looks back at Kun, and his eyes widen in shock.

“Kun?” He asks, and Kun tries to focus on his face. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Kun wipes at his face and his hand comes away red. He sees fragments in the red, sees light and color. The world stops and spins in reverse direction. Kun looks at Taeil, and he sees the overlapping image of a corpse.

“I love you,” he croaks out. “I still love you.”

“There's something wrong with your eyes,” Taeil says worriedly, stepping forward. “Your eyes —”

Kun rewinds. He does not want to.

He falls through the rewind and then he is standing near the door of the coffee shop. He sees Taeil and pushes past the other people to get to him. He wraps Taeil in his arms, murmuring _ I love you I love you I love — _

_ you. _

Kun rewinds. He cannot stop. He tries to fight it but time grabs him and pushes him back. He's trapped in a loop, a moment that lasts an eternity.

Standing by the door of the coffee shop. Taeil. Kun falling to the ground. The world is inverted colors and overturned buildings and stars that litter the daytime sky. 

“Your eyes,” Taeil says, leaning over him. He’s frowning and Kun wants to sob, wants to erase all time completely. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Kun rewinds.

And rewinds.

And rewinds.

…

It’s been a while since Taeil has been in this town.

He stops at a coffee shop he used to visit quite a bit when he was in college and stares at the ceiling while he waits. He pays for his coffee and heads towards the door. He plans on visiting the shop across the street before going to meet his parents. Maybe he can get something nice for his mom.

Just as he’s reaching for the door a hand rests on his shoulder and a raspy voice calls out his name. He turns to see Kun smiling tiredly at him, face pale. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, and his eyes…

A car crashes into a fire hydrant outside. Taeil doesn’t notice.

“Kun!” Taeil smiles and grabs his hand. His chest feels warm at the sight of someone so familiar. “It’s been, what, two years? It’s so good to see you!”

Kun smiles thinly, and Taeil realizes his hand is ice cold and shaking. Kun looks ill. Taeil squints at his face and realizes that Kun’s eyes, which used to be so soft and kind, are somehow wrong. Somehow off. Taeil steps forward and realizes that his pupils are fractured, split like pieces of brown ceramic across the whites of his eyes. He gasps, stepping back, but Kun has already latched onto his wrist with those cold, cold hands.

Kun smiles. It is terrifying to see the absolute lack of warmth in his expression, the slight madness of his features. His broken eyes peer at Taeil and he can feel horror rise in his throat like a scream.

“It doesn’t feel like two years,” Kun says, smile unhinged. “It feels like only seconds.”

**Author's Note:**

> *insert pic of me screaming*


End file.
